Karum: Did you mean...?

The ruins of Karum (known today at Kültepe in central Turkey), the capital trading centre of the Assyrian merchants in Anatolia in the first quarter of the 2nd millennium BCE. This period was called the “Assyrian Trading Colonies Period“.

Assyria was the region located in the ancient Near East which, under the Neo-Assyrian Empire, reached from Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) through Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and down through Egypt. The empire began modestly at the city of Ashur...

Ashur (also known as Assur) was an Assyrian city located on a plateau above the Tigris River in Mesopotamia (today known as Qal'at Sherqat, al-Shirqat District, northern Iraq). The city was an important center of trade, as it lay squarely...

The lives of women in ancient Mesopotamia cannot be characterized as easily as with other civilizations, owing to the different cultures over time. Generally speaking, though, Mesopotamian women had significant rights, could own businesses...

Although mentioned several times in the Biblical texts, the actual existence of the Hittites was largely forgotten until the late 19th century CE. With the discovery of Hattusa in 1834 CE, the city that was for many years the capital of the...

The great cities of Mesopotamia ("the land between two rivers") developed prior to the late 4th millennium BCE along two rivers – the Tigris and Euphrates – and were fully established by the Early Dynastic period (circa 2900 to circa 2350/2334...

Elam, located in the region of the modern-day provinces of Ilam and Khuzestan in Iran, was one of the most impressive civilizations of the ancient world. It was never a cohesive ethnic kingdom or polity but rather a federation of different...

Mediterranean trade increased exponentially at the turn of the first millennium. During Rome's zenith, goods of all sorts began to move in all directions. As a common traveler aboard merchant ships, Paul traveled within such a milieu. Tracing...

Clay tablets with cuneiform letters found at Kültepe in central Turkey (ancient Kanesh), 1900 BCE – 1700 BCE. They were all written by merchants who, from around 1900 BCE, had come to Kanesh from the city of Ashur in Assyria and established...

The Shushtar Hydraulic System is a Sasanian era (3rd century CE) water irrigation system in Shushtar in Iran that included watermills, dams, tunnels and canals. The mills, one of which is still functioning, were used to grind wheat and barley...